I have always thought of myself as a fairly normal person, fun-loving and carefree.  It has recently been pointed out to me that that may not be quite the case.  I have a number of, shall we call them “fears,” “qualms” or “concerns” that my friends don’t seem to have, or understand.  These “quirks” all seem thoroughly reasonable and understandable to me, but I have been asked, by my vast reading audience, to explain a few of them and their origins.

Number One: I have a fear of orchids.  And birds of paradise.  And indeed, most tropical flowers.  I find them to be rapacious-looking, like they want to consume you through big, gaping meaty-looking mouths.  Despite what you may think, this fear was not generated by an unfortunate viewing of “Little Shop of Horrors.” Rather, and I remember this vividly, it started when, as a kid, I read the entire Nero Wolfe series of books by Rex Stout.  

The hero, Nero Wolfe, lives in a brownstone on West 35^th Street.  The brownstone’s crowning glory is a rooftop greenhouse which houses more than 10,000 potted orchids and tropical plants.  Invariably, Wolfe solves his crimes by sitting in the steamy greenhouse, surrounded by his thousands of plants, breathing in and out with his eyes closed in the near tropical heat.  Something in my ten-year-old brain was completely disgusted by the image of thousands of plants staring at the rotund man as he sat sweating in the heat.  I pictured them leaning in closer and closer, till they could practically close their jaws on his corpulent flesh. Repulsed  now? I knew you would be.  You’ll never look at an orchid the same way.

Number Two: I really don’t like birds.  This one can be traced directly back to Alfred Hitchcock…thanks, Hitch.  They swarm, they attack, they’re gross. And I’m afraid to swim in water deeper than my chin….thank you, Steven Spielberg.  Sharks could be lurking anywhere…you never really know.  Even in my friend’s pool.  It could happen. 

Now, all of my fears aren’t caused by popular entertainment…witness…

Number Three: I hate going to malls.  I’ll shop at any store you can approach from the street, but unless it’s an absolute necessity, I refuse to enter a mall.  I dislike the idea of being in a confined space where someone could just take out a gun, start shooting and there’s nowhere to run.  This is also the reason I won’t go to Universal CityWalk. Once you’re up there, you’re trapped. Needless to say, this particular trait makes socializing difficult sometimes.  When your stance is, “No, I won’t meet you at the Beverly Center, and no, I won’t go see a movie at CityWalk, and no, I certainly won’t check out the new CB2 in that Crunch mall (unless I find on-street parking),” you’re not always the world’s most popular girl. 

Just in case you think that I’m a lone “nutjob,” as my friend Mina* likes to call me, please note that it runs in my family.  My sister, Madrian*, won’t wear anything with buttons on it.  She says that when we were little, I’d wrestle her to the ground and shove buttons from my mother’s button box up her nose.  I have no memory of any such incident, although I do know that the button box did indeed exist. To this day, she won’t wear button-down shirts, jeans with buttons, sweaters that have decorative buttons…nothing.  She won’t even sleep under a duvet that has a cover that buttons.  It could have happened.  I could have caused this…it does sound like me. But I refuse to admit that to her. 

So now that you’re all feeling just a little bit normal, here’s one more. I will not ever wear my hair up, unless I’m at the gym.  I’m convinced that my head is the size of a pin, and is completely disproportionate to my body.  No up-dos, no half-up/half-downs, no French twists or even braids.  Not for weddings, formals, or any special occasion…the hair will always be down, making my head look exactly the size it was meant to be. 

I hope you’re all feeling a little better about yourselves now that you’ve read this…I’ll just go hide under the covers (I’m also afraid of the dark).

On the surface I might appear to have a cynical crust, but if you bust through that tough exterior, you’ll find I’m really a hopeless romantic. The evidence of my love of love can be found under my bed where I keep my stash of trashy romance novels. There are a dozen or so well worn paperbacks that I’ve pulled out many times and read and reread, in love with muscular but damaged male leads who, while teaching their female counterparts the art of slow and sensual lovemaking, are actually saved somehow by said heroine.  I know, I know, make all the fun you want.  I’ve been laughed at by the best of you, and I don’t care.

Recently, while having cocktails with a group of my sophisticated girlfriends, I ended up being the butt of their teasing over my love of the “romance novel” – the trashier the better.  They all admitted that they love a good romance, but found my lust for buxom virginal heroines and throbbing muscular heroes a little hard to understand.  “But that’s what good romance is,” I said. “That is just plain silly.” I was told.

One of my sophisticated friends told me that the book “Cold Mountain,” by Anthony Minghella, was the most romantic thing she had ever read.  “This book isn’t really a romance novel, but a piece of dramatic literature that happens to have the most romantic story ever told,” she said. So I read it. It was a very good story that takes place during the civil war.

The male lead, Inman risks his life to return to the heroine of the book, Ada, after being taken with her beauty and one passionate kiss four years earlier.  It seemed romantic enough – Inman struggling through horrible obstacles to return to the woman he loved.  And even though I had to wait until nearly the end of the book before corsets were busted into and virginities lustfully taken (in my novels the virginity is usually lost sometime before page 123), I was impressed.  But then the book took a turn, the kind I hate, the kind that switches it from a “romance” to “literature.”

After one roll in the hay the hero is killed.  That’s right, after surmounting immeasurable odds for one good lay he is dead. How is this romance?  Where is the happy ending?  Somehow we are supposed to believe that in the end everything is ok, is somehow happy because, although Ada lost the love of her life, she is left behind with his bastard child?  Why do authors think this is happy?  Ada has to spend the rest of her life running a farm, never having sex again, and raising a bastard child all by herself? This is a good trade off?  I don’t think so.

This got me thinking about all the other so-called great dramatic romances, so I looked up MovieFone’s 25 most romantic movies ever made and this is what I found. In fifteen of the films either the hero or heroine dies.  In four more, the couple doesn’t end up together.  In two the male lead is a ghost.  This is romance? Dysfunctional dead couples who may or may not have even been alive in the first place.  In the top three, “Casablanca,” “Titanic” and “Wuthering Heights,” one of the lovers dies.  This is not happy. This is not romantic.  The next two, “Gone with the Wind” and “The Way We Were,” they break up.  How is it romance when the couple doesn’t even end up together?

Here is what I have decided.  Yes, I have enjoyed most of the movies on this list.  Yes, I have even found them to be romantic.  But this is what I need for a good romantic story: a dashing and troubled hero, preferably a pirate or a Lord of some kind, a buxom, sensual, yet virginal heroine who may be physically weak but is mentally strong, danger and thrilling obstacles to be overcome, passionate sex by page 123, and most of all, a happy ending.